


Parents

by slacktension



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-05
Updated: 2012-07-05
Packaged: 2017-11-09 05:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/452115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slacktension/pseuds/slacktension
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako and Korra think about having kids and end up meeting a street urchin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parents

Their first pregnancy scare came as a shock. It lasted all of one week until Korra got her period, and they both breathed a sigh of relief. But the thought of becoming a father didn’t leave Mako’s mind for the rest of the month.

“What do you think about having kids?” he asked.

He already knew the answer. She wanted some, not a lot. They had discussed it before getting married, but she still looked up at him with her eyes wide with surprise.

“Do you want me to get pregnant for real?” she asked.

Mako nervously clasped his hands together over his stomach. They were lying in bed after having breakfast; it was one of those rare days where they allowed themselves a break from work. He looked up at the ceiling, feeling his heart start to race.

“How do you feel about adoption?”

—-

She had seen the way he stared now at the homeless children that still managed to find their way to the streets. The city was changing under her guidance, and Mako and Bolin had been vocal about their experiences with orphanages. New facilities with actual funding and supplies had gone up, there were now rules and regulation, and many child protection laws had been put into place, each one inspired by a story Mako or Bolin had told her. They could never save them all, of course, but Mako still clung to the idea that it was possible to save everyone. 

When her mother would send them piles of hand stitched blankets every winter, most of them would mysteriously disappear, until half of the city’s remaining homeless children were sleeping under the Avatar’s blankets. He wrestled with the idea of having  _extra money_  to spend as he pleased, never having to luxury of being frivolous, and ended up slipping his spare yuans into the hands of those children.

—-

On their way to the largest orphanage in the city, they met Sitka.

—-

She was seven, and on her own. When they finally were able to give her a bath, her skin was a pale brown just a shade lighter than Korra’s. Her eyes were dark copper with flecks of gold when they caught the light. Her dark brown hair was a thick mess, choppy and short, because she had cut it herself when the ends started to mat together. She was a firebender, skilled with contained tricks that she would perform on sidewalks with a tin cup at her feet.

It was a hellish process to finally bring her home. During the legal proceedings, she had to stay in an orphanage, which she ran away from twice. Mako ended up staying there with her until Korra convinced City Hall to let them have their little girl. 

—-

Sitka didn’t know what to make of Korra, and the Avatar could tell.

“Why didn’t you have a baby on your own?” she asked on night. She was supposed to be in bed, as was Korra, but they both ended up eating ice cream at the kitchen table.

Korra shrugged. “Mako was like you. He wanted to adopt.”

“So you can have a baby?”

She nodded.

“Are you going to have one?”

She shrugged. She didn’t know. It was still a possibility.

“Why did you want me, then?”

Korra froze and stared at the little girl. She had to sit on a book in order to reach the table. Her ice cream had managed to make it onto her face and hands more than into her mouth, but she had the most serious expression on her face. There was no hurt, or childish confusion; it was far too adult.

Korra stood up and went to the sink, where she wet the corner of a dish rag, and walked over to Sitka to clean her face and hands.

“Let me tell you about how I met Mako.”

There was the Avatar’s destiny and the red string of fate and the perfect, fateful line of events that brought her to Mako, and then to Sitka. She had no other way of describing it, of how they saw her huddled at the mouth of an alleyway, face glaring at the world because at seven years old she was already too aware of what it meant to be an adult. And when Korra met Mako’s eyes, they knew.

—-

She started calling Mako, _Dad_ , first. It didn’t surprise either of them, as Korra was home less often.

They had more in common, anyway.

Even after years free from the streets, Mako still had the habit of stashing things away in small hiding places throughout their apartment. Anything from money to socks to copies of legal documents. Sitka, for the first year, hid mostly food. She stole some of Mako’s money and stuffed it under her mattress. Just in case they decided they didn’t want her like her birth mother, or if something happened to them and she was left alone again.

One of their favorite activities together was running errands in the city, trying to find the quickest routes and shortcuts to each shop they needed to hit. Mako still knew the streets as if he had never left them, but Sitka was young, and had a sharper memory. She usually dragged him up fire escapes and climbed fences into compact backyards. 

They both despised the cold and liked to eat over-ripened fruit. They had both had held jobs in a textile mill on 32nd street. They both knew members of the Triple Threats.

She just started calling him  _Dad_  with no warning. The first time it happened, he called Korra in the Northern Water Tribe and cried.

—-

She announced to Korra that she was going to call her  _Mom_  one day during her firebending lessons.

“Why now?” Korra asked, holding back as she threw a volley of flames at her daughter.

Sitka waved it away with one hand, unamused by Korra’s weak flames. She got enough of that with Dad. “Well, I’ve been here a while. And you’re the only mom I’ve ever had.”

“Oh. Ok. Great.”

In bed that night, Korra told Mako and cried while laughing. She had a daughter. She was a mother.


End file.
